Wire joints

ABSTRACT

A joint for wires serving as ties for bales of cotton, wool, synthetic fibers and the like, the wire ends to be connected each comprising a rebent portion forming loops which define male and/or female members to be hooked one in to the other, the joint having means to reinforce the male member so that it withstands the maximum tensile stress applied to the tie without disengaging from the female member, the distal ends of the wire preferably being secured to the wire length by spot welding.

United States Patent Grossbudde 1 June 13, 1972 [54] WIRE JOINTS 1,957,676 5/1934 Sidel ..24/27 [72] Inventor: Willi Grossbudde, Holkesode 23,56 Wup- 3:?28 pmauangerfdd' Germany 178,754 6/1876 Fowler, ..24/28 [22] Filed: Sept. 28, 1970 FOREIGN PATENTS OR APPLICATIONS [21] Appl No.: 76,055

973,684 10/1964 Great Britain ..24/27 [30] Foreign Application Priority DI. Primry Examiner Donald A f Sept. 30, 1969 Germany ..1 19 49 203.6 Attorney-Watson, Cole, Grindle & Watson 52 11.5. C1 ..24 27 ABSTRACT 51 1111.01 ..B65d 63/10 A 101m for wires serving as ms for bales of cotton, wool, [58] Field ofSearch ..24/27,28, 29, 101 S synthetic fibers and the like, the wire ends to be connected each comprising a rebent portion forming loops which define [56] Rehrenccs Cited male and/or female members to be hooked one in to the other, UNITED STATES PATENTS the joint having means to reinforce the male member so that it withstands the maximum tens1le stress applied to the he 166,677 1875 Albertson 24/28 without disengaging from the female member, the distal ends 169,920 1 1/1875 Radley of the wire preferably being secured to the wire length by spot 301,482 7/1884 Davis ...24 27 welding 309,303 12/1884 l-lubert..... ...24/27 889,238 6/1908 Jensen ..24/27 1 Claim, 7 Drawing Figures PATENTEnJun 13 I912 3.668.741 SHEET 10F 2 Inv'en for WL'ZZJ Growl: uclele V PATENTEnJumm 3,868,741

SHEET 20F 2 171 VBTZtOI' WIRE JOINTS The invention relates to joints of wire and in particular, but not being limited thereto to steel wire joints.

When shipping fiber materials such as wool, cotton, synthetic fibers and the like, the fibers are pressed to form bales thereby reducing the overall volume to but a fraction of the volume of the loose fiber material. The bales so formed are retained in the compressed form after release of the pressure by ties consisting of steel straps or wires. The ties are passed through grooves in the press platens and their ends are connected to form a retaining ring about the compressed bale.

There are several systems or means to connect the strap or wire ends in order to have the bale retained with a maximum safety. For straps, so-called seals" are in use which secure the free ends of the strap to each other. The reliability or joint efficiency will depend upon the worker's skill and the quality of the tool which is necessary. Further, so-called sealless joints are known for straps and the straps are provided with mating slots engaged by the worker; the tensile strengths of the strap will, of course, be reduced at the joint due to the slots so that the joint efficiency cannot achieve 100 percent. A

general drawback of the straps as compared with wires is the considerable higher expense and the fact that the sharp edges of the strap may damage the wrapping of the bales in case of cold-rolled flat material being used, as for the sealless system.

For wire ties, the commonly used types may be briefly discussed as follows. I

Quite often, one end of the wire is bent back and twisted with the wire length, and to form the joint, the other free end is passed through the loop so formed, bent back, and twisted with the other wire length. To form the joint, a tool is necessary, and the joint efficiency depends upon the workers skill. Another type of joint has become known under the designation key hole tie. Again, one end of the wire is twisted with the respective wire length but the loop so formed is given the shape of a key hole. The other free wire end is deformedto provide a nail head which may be passed through the key hole and engages, after pressure release, the narrower portion thereof. This system requires the use of material of extremely strong quality because otherwise the nail head will fail.

Still another joint type of the reef knot wire" in which the ends of high quality wire are given the shape of open hooks which are mutually hooked with each other by the operator to form a flat knot. The joint efficiency thereof is quite poor because of the wire ends not being twisted so that the wire must be over-dimensioned for strength.

In general, the known joint systems either need tools for the time-consuming jointing operation and furtherv quite often require considerable length of wire to perform the joint with the desired reliability, or the efficiency of the joint, that is, its tensile strength as the wire strength, cannot achieve 100 percent so that the wire itself must be overdimensioned.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a joint for wires, in particular for bale ties, the efficiency of which is at least close to or even higher than 100 percent while the jointing'operation does not require tools nor even skilled operators, the length of wire used to form the joint being kept very small.

The joint according to the present invention consists of preformed joint members at both the wire ends similar to the key hole tie referred to. One of the members, called female,"

forms a loop in that the free end of the wire is bent back and twisted or, preferably, spot welded to the respective wire length. The number of weld spots can be easily determined such that the strength of the weld exceeds that of the wire length itself, So, failing of the joint at the female end is practically excluded.

The other joint member, called male, is also designed as a loop but its circumferential dimension is choosen smaller than that of the female member so that it may be passed through the female member loop and secured therewith by a hooking operation. The connection of therebent distal end of the male member to its wire length is preferably also made by spot welding under consideration of the same conditions as explained for the female member. So, the male member itself will also present at least the same strength as the wire itself.

The weak point of the joint is the engagement between the male and the female member because of the possibility that the male member under stress will be deformed such that it is pulled out of the female loop. According to the present invention, this will be overcome by reinforcing the male member at this point so that its strength is. improved. The reinforcement may be provided by defon'nation of the wire material in the loop portion of the. male member, of by increasing the entire section area of the male member. For the latter purpose, the loop portion of the male member may be provided with a reinforcing sleeve or the like. 7

Further objects of the invention will be apparent from the following description when considered in connection with the following description in which,

FIG. I is a sectional view of a portion of wired bale showing a first embodiment of the invention in disengaged condition;

FIG. 2 is a view similar to FIG. 1 showing the wire in the engaged condition; o

FIG. 3 is an end and plan view of one example of a reinforcing means for one of the loops;

FIG. 4 is a perspective view of another embodiment of the tie ends of the wire;

. FIG. 5 is a cross-section of a tie loop taken on the line 4-4 of FIG. 4 in the direction of the arrows;

FIG. 6 is a perspective view showing a still further embodiment of the invention; and

FIG. 7 is a perspective view of a modification of the embodiment shown in FIGS. 1 3.

In FIG. 1 there is shown a tie wire 1 for a bale 2, the ends of the wire 1 being twisted to fonn roughly triangular male loop 3 and female loops 4 and 4'. Parts of the wire 1 and the bale 2 are not shown in FIG. 1 for simplification of illustration. The

male member 3 formed in the upper end of the wire 1 is reinforced by a sleeve 5 which may, for example, be of metal tubing which is pushed onto the wire prior to the formation of the loop 3, To form the joint between the two ends of the wire I, the male loop 3, which as shown in FIG. 1 is slightly smaller than the female loop 4, is inserted into the loop 4 by an operator. The transverse portion of the loop 3, which is reinforced by the sleeve 5, is wider than the inside of the female loop 4 and forms a positive lock between the two ends of the wire 1, FIG. 2 shows the members locked together. Under stress the transverse portion of the female loop 4 becomes deformed so that the loop 4 becomes elongated but, because of the reinforcing sleeve 5 on the loop 3, the male member retains its shape and keeps the two ends of the wire together. The joint cannot be disengaged by tension alone and will fail only if the tensile stresses are sufficient to break the wire.

, Although in the example just described, the sleeve 5 is stated to be a length of tube, it may take other forms, such as for example, a length of channel section material, which can be fitted over the transverse part of the loop 3 after the loop has been formed. FIG. 3 shows end and plan views of such a length of channel section material indicated by the reference 6. In order to prevent the channel section from falling off the wire of the loop 3, the longitudinal edges 6 adjacent to the open side of the channel can be bent inwards after the channel has been fitted onto the wire. This bend is indicated by the dotted lines in the end view shown in FIG. 3. The ends 7 of the channel section 6 may be shaped to be concave as shown in the plan view included in FIG. 3.

The embodiment of the invention shown in FIG. 1 includes a second female loop 4 formed part-way along the length of the lower end of the wire 1 to provide an alternative position for joining the two ends of the wire 1 together so that the length of the wire 1 may be varied. If desired, more than two loops may be provided in one or both ends of the wire 1, although of course in any two loops which are to be locked together as described above, the male loop must include some form of transverse reinforcement.

The tie joint shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 comprises a male member 8 and a female member 9. Male member 8 is designed to be passed through the opening defined by female member 9 so that after release of the tie ends, the tip' 10 of the female member 9 engages the neck portion 11 of the male member 8 while the arm portions 12 of the latter will find support on the shoulder-portions 13 of the female member. Under stress, the shoulder portionsl3 will be straightened, and the arm portions 12 of themale member will be subjected to a corresponding force tending to also deform them. However, this deformation is avoided by deforming the male member arm portions as shown in FIG. 5 such that they are flattened so that any straightening thereof will be substantially eliminated, with the result that the joint cannot disengage under stress. The ends of the tie wires are each secured to the respective lengths by means of spot welding at 14. It has been proven that such a spot welding connection can be even more reliable than a twist connection while a considerable saving in material results. The joint efficiency has been found to be even better than 100 percent, that is the overload of the tie will not result in failure of the joint or in damaging the tie wire at another point of the wire length. The wire may be cold or warm rolled or drawn steel, the latter being less strong but cheaper, so that with one and the same wire gauge different load requirements may be complied with, resulting in a reduction of the necessary tools to comply with different stress requirements.

FIG. 6 shows another wire tie joint according to the inven-.

tion. Here again, the wire connections have been made by spot welding. Both joint members 15 and 16 are identical and shaped substantially circular. A button member 17 is of substantially cylindrical shape and is provided with one or two (as shown) circumferential grooves 18 to be engaged by the loops defined by the members 15. and 16. The button member 17 thus reinforces both joint members in that the tensile stress applied to the wires is transmitted to the entire circumference of the respective loop.

The button 17 may be made of metal or of plastic material for withstanding the shearing stress applied thereto. The members l5 and 16 may be considered as female with respect to the button member and as male when provided with the latter. A joint comprising a supplementary element necessarily will be considered as less advantageous but may be preferred in certain cases in view of the identical shape of the joint members which consequently require but one tool for manufacture.

FIG. 7 shows a modification of the embodiment of FIGS. 1 to 3, The female member being identical to that of the first embodiment, the male member 20 shown in FIG. 7 is also substantially shaped to define a triangle. The reinforcing part 22, however, is made of sheet metal in a substantially triangular shape to match with that of the joint member 20 and will be fastened thereto by turning the projections 23, 24 and 25 of the part 22 over the corresponding wire portions 33,34 and 35.

The invention has been described with reference to bale ties made of metal wire. It will be appreciated that the invention may find application in other fields, as packing and the like, and that the wire material need not be metal. Plastic ties may be used and provided with joints according to the invention.

1 claim: I

1. A bale tie joint comprising a male wire end member and a female wire end member adapted to be mutually hooked together, each of said members comprising a rebent wire portion spot welded to the wire length, said female member having a substantially triangular shape and said male member having a substantially oval shape with the longer axis extending perpendicularly with respect to the wire length, at least a portion of said male member being flattened to thereby reinforce said male member when hooked together with said female member. 

1. A bale tie joint comprising a male wire end member and a female wire end member adapted to be mutually hooked together, each of said members comprising a rebent wire portion spot welded to the wire length, said female member having a substantially triangular shape and said male member having a substantially oval shape with the longer axis extending perpendicularly with respect to the wire length, at least a portion of said male member being flattened to thereby reinforce said male member when hooked together with said female member. 